Not a Technology Person: Motivating Older Adults Toward the Use of Mobile Technology

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of understanding and enhancing motivation among older adults to adopt mobile technology, highlighting that motivation is crucial alongside interface design for successful technology use.

Contribution

It introduces the need to study elderly motivation for technology adoption and discusses techniques to encourage their engagement beyond interface improvements.

Findings

Motivation significantly influences elderly technology adoption.

Design guidelines should include motivational strategies.

Understanding elderly desires can improve technology acceptance.

Abstract

Older users population is rapidly increasing all over the World. Presently, we observe efforts in the human-computer interaction domain aiming to improve life quality of age 65 and over through the use of mobile apps. Nonetheless, these efforts focus primary on interface and interaction de- sign. Little work has focused on the study of motivation to use and adherence to, of elderly to technology. Developing specific design guidelines for this population is relevant, however it should be parallel to the study of desire of elderly to embrace specific technology in their life. Designers should not be limited to technology design but consider as well how to fully convey the value that technology can bring to the lives of the users and motivate adoption. This position paper discusses techniques that might nudge elderly towards the use of new technology.